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Sunday, February 23, 2014

Hi everyone!The King of Dublin blog tour kicks off on the 24th. Follow me and Heidi around, leave a comment somewhere, and you could win one of each of our backlist titles, and also an Irish-related thingummy. I can't be more specific, as I haven't seen the thungummy. But I'm sure it's very nice.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Well, anyone who’s been following my
Twitter lately has seen that I’m currently fighting off a possum invasion. And
by “fighting off” I mean “doing nothing to prevent it”. I think I'm going to start telling people it's an elaborate promo scheme for JA Rock's Trouble At Possum Ranch. That's plausible, right?

A few people have asked about animal
control. Now, I could hire a possum trap, but it’s after trapping them that
things get tricky. Possums are a protected native species, so you can’t hurt
them (and look at those cute little faces!). You also can’t relocate them more
than fifty metres from where you trap them. Fifty metres? THEY COULD STILL SEE
MY HOUSE FROM THERE!

So that seems a pointless expense.

Anyway, the other day at the hardware shop
I was looking at screens, thinking that I could tack it up around the shutters
in my house, and damn the aesthetics. And then I remembered that possums have
been known to peel back tin in order to get into roofs.

So that seems like a pointless expense as
well.

At the moment, I think bribery seems like
the best option. It’s worked before. In the Great Possum Invasion of 2012,
after Cyclone Yasi knocked down a bunch of trees, the possums were breaking in
and stealing bread and bananas and whatever they could get their clever little
paws on – they can also open cupboards – I ended up leaving food outside for
them. I agreed to do this, and they agreed not to break in unless I forgot. Or
was late. Or they wanted something apart from bananas.

Anyway, once the trees grew back the
possums went back to their old diet.

Another option, of course, is earplugs.
Because here’s the thing. If the possums break in and I don’t hear it, it
doesn’t count, right? Ignorance is bliss. That way, if I come out of my bedroom
in the morning and there are things knocked onto the floor, I’ll just blame the cats.

Now, I don’t hate possums. I just wish they’d remember that they are outside
animals. Particularly when it’s midnight, this is my bathroom, and I really,
really need to pee.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Today on the blog I’m
talking to the very talented M. Caspian, author of one of my favourite m/m
tentacle reads, KRAKEN. Thanks for stopping by, M.

You’re
welcome. Thank you for having me. But before you ask any questions, I have to
thank you, Lisa. You had no reason to
pick up my book, and I’m so grateful that you did. I don’t even know how you
saw it. Once you reviewed it, BAM: it went on 40 to-read lists. And thank you
everyone who read it, even if you decided tentacles weren’t for you. I’ve been
overwhelmed by the book’s reception by readers. I’m very thankful and happy.

Hey. Fresh non-con m/m tent-sex? As soon as that hit my radar, I was all over it!I’ll start with an
incredibly unfair question: why tentacles? And I only ask this because I’m not
sure of the reasons I like it so much myself. Only that I do. I definitely do.
Is it the dub-con factor? The weird Other/alien factor? Or does it tap into
something older than that: humanity’s primal fear of the monsters in the deep
and the dark?

When I
was a child I had a bed with storage drawers underneath it. I was convinced
there was an octopus living in those drawers. It was my deepest fear. I made my
mom check every night, but of course she wouldn’t pull all the drawers out at
the same time, so I knew the octopus was simply playing Scooby Doors with her.
Waiting. Biding its time.

Because
I was afraid, I had to know more. Sheer terror made me learn about octopuses,
and cephalopods in general. It’s that sense of the abject, you know? You want
to look away, but you have to keep watching. Much as with YouTube videos of
people s.l.o.w.l.y removing nose pore strips.

I think interesting
things come from juxtaposition. What we wish for, and what we fear, at the same
time. That’s why love and hate together are so powerful. Love and indifference:
meh, no big deal. Tentacled creatures are both very different and very similar
to us, simultaneously. When you watch an octopus work out a puzzle, its
intelligence seems very human, but when you see it watching you back, you also
realize it’s utterly alien. And octopuses are solitary, whereas human are
inherently social.

I guess
I was just thinking about tentaclesex fics where the tentacle monster is just
like a human, which kind of overlooks that they are not only a completely
different species, but a different phylum! There would be a distinct difficulty
in creating empathy between an octopus and a human. One is utterly individual, yet
good at mimicry and camouflage, and collects and keeps things it finds pleasing.
The other creates social connections as a matter of survival and uses the
exposure of vulnerabilities, and sharing, as a way of creating emotional closeness.
It’s a recipe for disaster, relationship wise.

Saying
that, I don’t want to overthink things, here. I mean, it’s horror tentacle
porn. There’s the . . . length aspect. Tentacles: getting into places other
appendages just don’t reach, since 1624. It should be oozy fun with the
occasional shudder. Which is why writing Cy and Will was so enjoyable.

Were you inspired at
all by hentai, or did you find your own way towards tentacles?

No,
actually, I’m not a big hentai fan. I’ve always gone more the traditional art
history route. I know most tent fans are familiar with Hokusai’s shunga work
Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife --

-- but you know, there’s a Reuben with tents from
the Marie de’Medici series, that’s 200 years older: the one where she’s
arriving in Marseilles.

There’s no actual penetration, you understand, but the
lushness of the tentacles, and the slippery silveriness where they blend into a
meaty thigh . . . well, they’re gorgeous. And also look muscular enough to rip
a horse apart.

One thing that
impressed me a lot about KRAKEN was the research. I mean, I actually learned
something about cephalopods. Was there anything you learned while you were
writing KRAKEN?

Arguably,
I already knew more about cephalopods than is strictly healthy. But I did learn
that there are squid who live too deep for ink clouds to be an effective
predator deterrent, and instead they extrude a gelatinous glowing glob, made
with bio-luminescent bacteria, to act as a decoy. I would have liked to have
worked that in somehow, but, you know, a mucous glob, even a glowing mucous
glob, is pretty challenging to make sexy. Also I now know entirely too much
about the processes and chemistry involved in copper smelting. Probably best to
avoid me at parties.

I’ve raved about the
world building in KRAKEN before. The island feels very authentic, with its own
history and industry and geography. It felt very real, even while the story
itself was imbued with a kind of dreamlike (or nightmarish) quality as we
experience the island along with Will. That’s not a question. That’s an
observation. See? I’m still raving about the world building!

So let’s talk Cy. To
begin with, I didn’t know what to make of Cy. I felt that you set him up like
so many “alphas” in m/m romance – he was all possessive and “you’re mine” and
right on the line of the creep factor. The sort of guy that seems so popular in
romance. And then you pushed him right over the edge into Freaky Monster OMFG
Get It Away From Me territory. Which I loved! Was it your intention to subvert
readers’ expectations in that way?

Ah, the
possessive alpha male we love so much. Yes, I wanted to kind of extend that to
its logical conclusion. Because, in the real world, possessive alpha males are
not sexy after the first half hour. But in a book – hell, yes. So at what point
would Cy stop being perceived as alpha, and clearly start being sociopathic? And
I think that point is different for every reader. But then he’s never seen an
actual successful relationship modelled for him: maybe he’s just a lonely
tentacle monster who grasps precious things too tightly to his chest, until he
cracks them.

No, no, don't try and make me feel sorry for him now! Was KRAKEN your first
attempt at writing a novel? If so, was it different than you thought it would
be? Did you find anything easier or harder than you thought you would?

Technically,
not my first attempt. I wrote a fantasy novel when I was 13. It had hand-drawn
maps. I may have spent more time on the maps than the plot. My English teacher
raved about it, so naturally I threw it in the garbage in embarrassment and
never tried another. Until Kraken.

OMG. Interrupting here
to reminisce about my own fantasy epic with hand-drawn maps. Terrible. It was just
terrible. About four million words long without a single original idea. Sigh.
I loved it so.

Was it
different than I thought it would be? That’s a tough question. It makes novel-writing
akin to an unexplored country, doesn’t it? “But the portions are so big! And
how do I purchase a subway ticket?”

What did
surprise me was that the characters seemed to have their own minds, and I was merely
transcribing their actions onto the page. There’s a scene in the book where Cy
does something particularly . . . um . . . bad. I initially thought that was
going to be a sweet love scene. Cy took Will by the hand, led him into the
bedroom, and suddenly I’m pleading for Cy to stop because he’s freaking the
hell out of me. But my fingers kept typing. According to experts, that’s the sign
of a terrible writer: losing control of what is happening on the page.

Pfft. Experts have no
fun.

Was
anything harder than I expected? Well, I assumed everything would be hard. And
I was right. But the hardest thing of all: mistakes! Not even typos: flat out
mistakes that nobody caught, least of all me. Like *cough* Cy and Will having a
conversation in the kitchen, and Parker leaning back against the kitchen
counter to deliver a line. Say what now? To my shame, the story was indeed
riddled with typos. I was racing to get it out as a freebie for Christmas Day,
and I just didn’t get them all. If you downloaded a free copy, then you can go
to Smashwords and get the latest version. Which is possibly typo-free. And
definitely has no Parker in the kitchen. If you bought it from Amazon, then you
got a clean copy. But I do apologize for that.

What was
better than expected was the astounding generosity of
spirit from everyone around me. My betas. You, Lisa, interviewing me here. Author
Anyta Sunday, who gave me truly invaluable feedback on the second draft. All
the readers who recc’d, rated, or reviewed Kraken. I thought it would take months for anyone to read my book. That
people read it, and liked it, has made me happier than anything else in my
life.

And finally, what can
we expect to see next from M. Caspian?

I am
working on something. Which does not involve tentacles in any way. But might
involve partner-sharing slash exhibitionism. Again, not something every reader
wants to enjoy.

I want
to keep writing. I enjoy putting words together, but I know how flawed Kraken
was. Is. I just want to work at getting better.

One
other thing that was unexpected about Kraken was discovering how much I enjoy
the physical act of writing fiction. For tech junkies, I have a Ducky keyboard
with Cherry blues, and the clicky-clicky is a very appealing sound. The
physical feedback a mechanical keyboard offers is remarkably soothing. Writing
for fun is a very different beast than writing for work. On those rare
occasions the words are flowing, the process is, well, highly pleasurable.

You had me at "partner-sharing slash exhibitionism". Thanks so much for visiting, M, and good luck with your future projects!

Thanks,
Lisa.

P.S. Kyn from GR wants me to ask if there
is a chance of mpreg in any further tentacle stories.

Dear Kynthos-the-Archer,
if you get your prompt ready for the M/M romance story event later in the year,
I’ll write one just for you, set in the same universe. Because your updates, and
review, kept me smiling through a whole week. Again, a sign of a terrible
writer: I know we’re not supposed to read reviews! It probably won’t be MPreg!Will,
though. And you have to specify if you want struggly non-con, an HEA, etc.

This free, fun, and surprisingly sweet story is all about the tentacles. But more than that, it's all about the boy with the tentacles -- Kip -- who is lonely, unloved (except for his sister, who's off to join the Peace Corp) and still suffering from being rejected by Aniket, his high school crush, when they both realised the same night he was a tentacle monster. Then, years later, Aniket walks back into his life.

Most tentacle stuff I've read is all about the alien non-con, but not here. Here, the monster is just a sweet young guy with some unusual biology.

Read this one, guys. It's super short, super fun, and has some seriously hot scenes going on. Check this out even if you don't like tentacles, because Kip is such a lovely character that it won't take you long to see past them.

First of all, ignore the title, the cover, and probably the blurb. This isn't cheesy like you think it is. We all know how it's going to go, right? Sexy, cocky guy gets entangled and ravished by a tentacle monster, and has the forced-gay time of his life.

Well it kind of goes there, but for starters the writing is better that. There's some nice world building that you don't usually get in shorts like these, but more than that it's atmospheric. I mean that. This isn't PWP tentacle sex, this is almost a horror story. It's dark and weird, and the ending was really, really unexpectedly creepy and wonderful.

I thought I knew was I was getting into -- a smutty piece of fluff with a man who is molested by a tentacle monster but it's okay because he likes it in the end. That is not this book. This book is creepy. I said that, right? It's the word I keep coming back to.

4. A guy who wanders into the middle of everything and happens to be the next chosen sacrifice. Check.

But that's not all this book has got. It's got a fantastic sense of place -- the descriptions of the landscapes weren't just visual, they were visceral. The island has it's own history, of both its people and its industries. And the atmosphere just gets creepier and creepier, like the rolling fog in a 1940's gothic film. The details here are fantastic. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll just say -- the birds! Oh my god, the birds! There are so many layers here, that I will definitely be rereading it, and at a slower pace this time so I don't miss a thing.

Make no mistake. Kraken is not romance. What Kraken does is take the basic set-up of a romance and twist it around until you realise you're looking at a horror and you have been since the very beginning.

This is a great book if you like darker fiction. Dip your toes into these waters, and I guarantee you'll be back for more.

And I'll be interviewing M Caspian soon on my blog, so stay tuned for that!